The Journals of Spalding Gray

by Spalding Gray; Nell Casey

  I worry about Gram and I wonder how she is. I want to come home for Christmas and hope to take three or four days off. Please send my love to Sis [Alice Gray, whom his father married two years after the death of Gray’s mother], Gram, Chan, and Bianca. I don’t have C&B’s address, or I would have written them. I hope to be out of here soon and off to the Grand Canyon (if I still have a car).

  Much love,

  Spud

  SEPTEMBER 1977

  TUESDAY

  At 10:00 AM they called my name and said the magic words, “Roll it up.” I had been waiting for this so long that I could not believe it. I never thought it was bail. I thought I’d done my time. I got dressed. I was shaking all over and then realized that Liz had sent bail and my court date had been set for Oct. 3. I felt sick, just sick, but I left all the same. I wanted to get on the road so bad! The strange thing was, when I stepped out of jail I did not feel free.

  The following are notes from one of Gray’s journals that he eventually included in a short essay called “Natural Child Birth,” about visiting LeCompte’s pregnant sister, Ellen, just outside of Saratoga, New York, in October 1977. The excerpt below describes a conversation that Gray and LeCompte had about sex while on their way. They were waiting for their van to be fixed—after breaking down on the road—in a nearby coffee shop.

  We ended up talking about sex.

  Did it really exist? I brought up the subject because I had my doubts. I had felt lately that it was a sign for something else. That when I was in it I was never in it but felt like a puppet programmed by someone else. All the programs I had grown up with. The magazines, the movies. It was an old story. Sex was like everything else but I had used it as a last stand by. It had its power because it had been denied me for so long so I could never get enough of what I had never had from the beginning when it was there but not there. When it came up in me and then went back in circles and led to something else.

  We both liked those upstate coffee shops. The waitress being right out front and overhearing people’s slow conversations. Something about nothing. The slow morning, the watery coffee. The old thick white cups. Outside the leaves came down slowly. Made a hollow crisp sound when they hit. The way the man smoked his Pall Mall taking a long drag and exhaling the smoke straight up toward the ceiling away from the gal at the counter. Then slowly putting it back in the ashtray then folding his hand like a prayer, his big ass falling all over and off the stool, then slowly breaking to reach for his cup and sip again. The distant sound of a road machine. A jack hammer. What was it about sex? The way you could never have it really, not incorporate it, something like water. when you were in it, you were in it, when you were out, you were out forever. Like the dream I had had of this anonymous blind woman. I was trying to get her in the right position. I was in her but not in her. I couldn’t get through. I couldn’t really fuck her. Not lost not found but always in this place of expectation. Some feeling of mystery as though there was something on the other side.

  Maybe like the way I had been brought up to believe in heaven.

  Something I could not see or feel on the other side of all I felt and

  saw. Liz was across from me. Her steady eyes, her certain smile, the way I always come back to that. Home base and there were still times that we could be … what? Sexy together or was it like the machine again. The puppet. Doing it because we were together and not with someone else. The blind woman in my dreams. Who was that? Taken out of a closet when I needed her. Getting her in all the positions. Fucking her so hard. A kind of love. Go on say it. Love, love, dirty love makes the animal, the beast with two backs.

  The following, from Gray’s 1978 and 1979 journals, are, for the most part, undated. An asterisk indicates a new entry.

  FEBRUARY 26, 1978

  Sunday

  Sometimes I see Liz running toward me with all that light and energy and I am happy and she looks beautiful to me and then, other times when I’m done, I try to bring her down.

  Liz said something this morning that I too had in the back of my mind that is: sometimes she sees us as light lost people traveling around thinking we are artists while everyone laughs behind our backs.

  *

  An odd kind of lonely Sunday. I think it’s hard for me not performing. Its when I’m alone with a book or in front of the TV that I miss a family and community. We loaded up the truck in the morning. Liz and I had a quickie before we went over. After the load up, Ron [Vawter] came over to the loft and then we went out postering for the children’s workshop. [Gray and LeCompte ran children’s theater workshops out of the loft.] It was a very cold clear day and all I did was talk about sex and relationships and other women. I told Ron that things had changed because the guilt was no longer there with Nancy. I was sure Liz did not mind me being overnight with her and that changed everything. When all the neurotic little goodies disappear around sex there is little left but the act itself or the “movie” of the act—watching my cock go in and out of a new hole. I called Lane but she was not in. I called Jude and asked her out for dinner and she gave me such a “No” that I knew that one was over before it began. I thought I didn’t mind but the old rejection got to me and I had a lot to drink and ate alone, in front of the TV. Sarah* [a woman with whom Gray had an affair while he was in a relationship with LeCompte] called and I listened to her talk (bored) while I watched TV then I asked her down (like a dirty old man). I knew she would not come. I watched “Cuckoo’s Nest” and cried after he got the shock treatment—old left over drunken guilt for not having come back from TEXAS to help my mother die.

  *

  A beautiful cool spring day. I spent most of the morning in the loft puttering around—could not get started on any one thing and did not care. I think am only beginning to relax after the work on the trilogy. We all went down to the Envelope [a theater next door to the Performing Garage that sometimes housed the Performance Group rehearsals and productions] and read over some of Jim’s new writing which I liked then spent some time talking about the space and I could not stay awake. Whenever Liz starts talking a lot, I tend to nod out to the sound of her voice. After rehearsal, Liz invited Willem back to the loft which made me kind of angry. I just did not feel like having him around. Liz and I went to see Irish ballet. The music was nice but we could not stand the dancing. Flip was there and we went to Joe Allen’s [restaurant] to drink eat and talk. We got home about 10:30, watched Gore Vidal on the Cavett show, had another spat about Willem and what we should do. I get into these things where I feel I have to take some action against them.

  *

  A very record (94 degrees) hot day which made it difficult for me to function. I went to the gym and then sort of dragged around for the rest of the day. I just about fell asleep during warm ups and then we had a very slow reading with the boys [Gray cast some of the children from his workshop in Wooster Group productions, including Nayatt School and Point Judith (An Epilog), a play the Wooster Group produced in 1980 as a concluding piece to Three Places in Rhode Island]. At times it was hard for me to listen to Philip* because he read so painfully slow and it reminded me of him at his age and at the same time, I wanted to give him all I could. These boys bring this out of me although I do think it is short lived—at least in the case of David* when I could see him beginning to become that threatening MAN of the world (baseball and all the rest of it). It is just before adolescence when they are both boys and girls—that is what fascinates me. I walked home in the warm night. The city was alive with people all out in the streets swallowed up by the warm night. It was like India. I did not stop until I met John on his bike and I talked for a while. I drank beer and ate (against my will—NIGHT compulsion). Ray and Liz came home. After Ray left, Liz gave me a foot massage and told me that Ray did not like me because of my self-centeredness. He felt I did not see him. I only SAW MYSELF.

  *

  Willy and Liz act like a couple more and it’s strange for me to watch but very necessary for growth in the form of know
ledge. I see her treating him like a boy, like a child…. dressing him up, telling him to change his shirt or fixing his hair. I miss that from her but a big part of me doesn’t want it anymore, doesn’t trust it anymore. Liz is a mother and she nurtures well and then she moves on. In a way, she has nurtured me through the big crisis of birth after India. She got me on my feet for my own work—12 years, a very long slow painful birth. Now I see that Willem needs her and she responds to that need like any good mother. If I could see this more clearly. The most I can give her is to let her go…. let her do this and I also see that I have no choice. The FORCE is in motion. I put it in motion as much as she did. We are all in this changing water together. I like Willem but it is difficult for me to listen to him talk. I like him for his natural way of existence…. his just being there for Liz. I think he is very good for her. A big part of me wants to see it work. I want her to be happy.

  *

  The old problem of doubt back on me again. Do I really have something to say or is it Liz who is saying it just like Richard? Am I just an actor, a vehicle through which other people’s ideas pass? One way to avail that is the speaking of my own words and I have such a professional doubt of my intelligence. My mistrust goes deep but the intro [for Rumstick Road] works for me because I am speaking my own words. “Rumstick” is a sense of original language and the intro, my words.

  I can’t sleep so well because I am wondering what is left to be done. I don’t just want to please my parent. PARENT = AUDIENCE. I want to get to it, what it (THEATER) was all about in the first place … the deepest needs of expression.

  *

  I went to Bloomingdale’s to pick up my pants and buy another pair. After that I went to a porn film and then got rushed into the horrid Broadway Baths where this black ham sucked my cock for a long time, realized I was bored and would not let—did not want me to “come” and gave a long lecture on hedonism and how he lived in White Plains to keep his sanity. As I look back on it, it’s funny but then I was depressed. I spent some time wandering around the horrid place, got man handled and sucked upon by gross men and at last let one finish me off. He was real good at sucking and swallowed my cock all the way then I got out of there fast and went to Sam Goodies to buy Brahms’ 1 symphony and went home, talked with Liz a little before she went out with Joan Jonas [a pioneer of video and performance art who came into prominence in the late sixties and early seventies] and then had a few scotches—got a little drunk and had dinner alone in front of the TV.

  *

  I did not give up drinking today as I hoped.

  Woke up late and so I was very uncentered—to the bank and then to Washington Sq. to start on cutting the Long Day’s Journey script [a seven-minute version of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night that the group performed as part of Point Judith (An Epilog) in 1980], to the bookstore and shopping and back about five and I was too early because I sort of walked in on Willem and Liz. I came in to the kitchen and started putting stuff away and Liz was in her closet hiding? (FROM ME?) getting dressed—strange feeling this looking across from the other side—Liz covering up and Willem stroking her hair, heavy vibes and all the rest of it. I went into the back and sat at my desk in a pout and Willem left and Liz and I had dinner together.

  *

  A long dream about a fascist commune (like Jonestown). I was kidnapped by them and could not escape (I wanted to tell Liz about it but I found her on the phone.) I was given one day of freedom to go home but I had to come back on my own or I would be killed by an assassin. Rich [presumably Schechner] and Liz (like parents) walked me up Chapin road from the harbor. I was crying and telling them I was going to be killed if I did not go back. Rich would not really listen to me (like DAD). It was during this kind of forced crying—like a child’s tantrum that I had a kind of distance on it all and realized that a part of me longed to go back to the commune if they would choose a wife for me and take care of me and plan my life out for me.

  *

  Difficult adjustment to Willem and the movies [this is in reference to Dafoe’s small uncredited role in Michael Cimino’s film Heaven’s Gate]—some jealousy. I want them to want me … fear of getting lost in some intellectual ART world—associations of Hollywood as being a working class world—theater for the people—fears of isolating myself in this little gay fancy SoHo world—looking at Willem as a FRESH meat and potatoes man. Another time of confusion for me. Willem going away brings it all up again—not so much the glamour but a theater for the people—working on the BIG American myth—repulsed by my subjectivism. I am stuck in this constant doubt … always reflecting and always in doubt. This doubt does not have a crack to seep into when we all work together but now Willy has made a crack in the boat. I made plans to go on with my solo piece; “Sex and Death up until age 14.” I know I must keep working. When I don’t—when there is no action, I am swallowed up in fear and doubt.

  Have Liz or I or both of us been working under the grand illusion that we were individually artistic in temperament and that would not dry up even if there was no group supporting us? Willy’s movie is now causing a fear and depression among us all. It makes it hard for me to work because I am constantly working under the knowledge of a sense of loss, also mad and sick fantasies that I could have been a “great actor” in the films.

  *

  Had a bad dream that it was the end of the world (a very real feeling so when I woke up I knew I had had a dream but I also knew it could be real). Children, who were plutonium polluted, were rushing at me everywhere and trying to touch me and I was dodging them and saying, or thinking, I was Christ and was charmed with some power of destiny and that I would make it through. When I got to the place I was going I realized that we were all going to die.

  *

  [In New Jersey visiting LeCompte’s family]

  A beautiful spring day. Liz and I got up early and had breakfast. I read some of my old College Philosophy text. Then went for a walk, not so relaxed, too much coffee. I came back and sat in the sun by the pool. I wrote a poem out of a coffee fit (who wants to hear it? I’m still the child. I can’t go unheard—unseen. I am no Emily Dickinson nor was I meant to be—my private history shut up in a room—but still, I want to write my own material. I want to speak my own words.)

  *

  [Back in New York]

  Chan [Gray’s younger brother] came and … [we] went out for a walk about 3—up to Wash Sq. and back. Liz says Chan seems well. I would not know. So often I feel so involved in myself that I don’t see others. I have to face what more seems to be the truth—that I could only love Liz to the extent that she was incorporated into ME, my work, my fears … all these years I’ve used her to PROP me up … to keep me alive and now it’s all being shaken and threatened by her relationship with Willem. Now I must be strong and take a good look at it. I feel now like I’m re-entering that HELL that was before I met Liz. I feel like a lost child again but before, I had my youth to go on and now I only see loneliness and old age and then I think—let go of it all—just give up on human love and put it all into ART and when I think that way it all looks barren. I feel like I will die without Liz. The worst thought is that Liz having our baby might save us. Oh HELP on that one. I need distance? I’m just like all the rest. I’m in the WORLD THAT IS.

  On April 20, 1979, Gray debuted his first solo show, Sex and Death to the Age 14, at the Performing Garage. He followed it with two more monologues in the same year: Booze, Cars, and College Girls and India and After (America).

  *

  There was a big audience for SEX and DEATH (over 70) which sort of threw me off but I loved it—perhaps I played more for the laughs. I don’t know. I had some feeling that I was committing artistic suicide by letting everyone get to know me so well.

  *

  Bill Harris called to tell me that I had won the SOHO Weekly [News, an alternative downtown paper] award for best non-Broadway actor. I was sort of surprised and happy but also felt a little empty (the differen
ce between actual and symbolic power—my actual power is in my work now and when that doesn’t “come” then I feel empty). Liz and I rushed off to see “Play It Again SAM” which was sort of sad and hopeless but had some funny moments for me but I notice that I am still not FREE with Liz—I often only laugh after she laughs. I wait for her to give me direction and this frightens me. I identify with Woody Allen’s clumsiness when he tries to play THE MAN. I identify with the little boy in him. I took Liz out for a hot chocolate after and we walked home. It was a nice night and the city had been washed clean by the rain. The trees were very green.

  *

  Went over to the Garage to set up chairs for my 103 reservations [for Sex and Death]. It was a very full house and there were many people there that I knew and could play the show for. Yvonne Rainer [experimental dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker] was there and Elaine from Houston sat right in the front row with that old sad crazy face. I really felt like I talked to the audience and that felt good—kind of like a preacher, poet, comedian, all mixed together. With reluctance, I went to meet Renée at the Collective and when I got there, I was glad to see her. [This is one of the first mentions of Shafransky in Gray’s journals.] We went for drinks and we got on well together and talked a lot. She is good looking and intelligent but only 26 years old. I would never have guessed it. We went back to her place. She lives in an office on John Street. We drank wine and talked then we went to bed and talked some about Willem and Liz. She, like so many other people, could not understand how I could live with it. These reactions make it hard for me to live with it. We got into some heavy fucking and she said, “Oh Spalding” and I said “yes” and she said, “I think I’m going to be sick” and at last she threw up. We both got very little sleep. I miss Liz.

  *

  A fire truck woke me up and I did not know where I was and for a long time, I had this kind of half awake repetitive dream fantasy, the siren on the truck was to be followed by a loud speaker proclaiming the FAME of Phil Glass and I but it never came up and a voice kept saying, “what if it never comes, what if they don’t announce your fame?” and I said, “It doesn’t matter.”